Being honest about Abe

I have wanted to see Steve Spielberg's Lincoln since the hype started months ago.  I've always been fascinated by our sixteenth president, the myth and the man. And from the previews and accounts, watching Daniel Day Lewis portray Lincoln was as close to seeing the real thing as one can get (if you don't count Disneyland's Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln...and I don't).

Since I have young children, I haven't seen a movie at a theater that didn't involve Disney or Pixar Studios and computer generated characters in at least five years. So I was resigned to not seeing Lincoln until it made it to cable or Red Box. But my wife, bless her soul, had a Groupon ticket to the local theater that expired this week so she suggested I use it to take my mother-in-law there where Lincoln was premiering just before President's Day.

The theater was packed, but we found okay seats towards the back of the theater and settled in for 2 1/2 hours of what I hoped would be greatness. The movie opens with a brutally disturbing battle scene that leads you to believe Lincoln is going to be an action film. But the few seconds of action in the opening is pretty much the last you see of the battlefield.

What follows is 2 1/2 hours of a 19th century version of the West Wing, fraught with enough political minutia to satisfy your most die hard wonk. The problem is, watching how 19th century politics works, although historically significant, is about as entertaining as watching paint dry while you are making sausage.

Don't get me wrong, the attention to detail in the film was amazing, as was most of the acting (though I don't think Tommy Lee Jones was acting and he looks old enough to have been in the Civil War). But if the costuming was accurate, ill-fitting suits were fashionable in the late 19th century. Daniel Day Lewis is amazing and he does portray a multi-faceted Lincoln who was a great leader and compasionate father. The problem is that the movie seemed too much like it was trying to make a dramatic version of a 50s educational film about how a bill becomes a law.

And, through Spielberg's intense lobbying efforts, Lincoln will likely win "Best Film" honors at the Oscars. But honestly, I don't think it is the best film. It's a good film and a significant film, but I'd be hard pressed to say it is the best film.

Though it was better than Madagascar 3, Brave in all honesty was more entertaining.

Perhaps I need to get out to films made for adults more often.

Feeding at the trough of disillusionment

I was at a meeting the other day where a guy flashed up a slide depicting something called the Gartner Hype Cycle that shows the life cycle of "new" technology. Normally my eyes roll back into my head when a slide containing a graph appears in a meeting. But this one had cool points on it like the Peak of Inflated Expectations, the Trough of Disillusionment, the Slope of Enlightenment and the Plateau of Productivity.

It was like something out of a Candyland board game for IT bureaucrats. Not that I imagine IT people play any games that aren't generated by an APP or an X-Box.

I have to say I was pretty enamored with the Trough of Disillusionment. I have spent many years there in blog land with my eye on the Slope of Enlightenment. But it is quite the slippery slope and I keep wallowing in the trough whimpering and muttering Marlon Brando lines from Streetcar Named Desire, On the Waterfront, the Godfather and Apocalypse Now (nothing from Don Juan DeMarco) . It sounds something like, "Stellaaaaaaaaa, I could have been somebody, I could have been a contender, but instead I'm a punk. But someday, and I'm not saying this day will ever come, I may call on you for a small favor, but tonight you sleep with the fishes. Oh the horror....Don Juan DeMarco...that's a film offer I should have refused!"

I realize it is gibberish, but what do you expect from the Trough of Disillusionment. 

Grim reaper with sombrero

I am often amused and baffled at the searches people conduct on Google that lands them on my microscopic piece of the Web. Apparently not one, but two people ended up at Dizgraceland while searching for "grim reaper with sombrero." Up until now, I have never written a post about a grim reaper with sombrero. So it just goes to show you that search engines do the best that they can with odd searches, but don't always deliver what you intended to look for.

 It's kind of like playing fetch with your dog. You throw a stick and sometimes they bring back a dead animal. Maybe not the best analogy.

 I don't claim to understand why someone would search for "grim reaper with sombrero." I think it may have something to do with a tattoo or motorcycle gang symbol. But if you do type "grim reaper with sombrero" in Google, you won't find the exact phrase, but it will pull up pages that use those words. And one of those was a series of my blog archives from 2011 where I talked about turning 53 and going to a Mexican restaurant where they would place a sombrero on my head and sing a Spanish version of "Happy Birthday." On that same page was a post about me putting my face on images of the grim reaper and calling them the "Tim Reaper." I don't think that was really what the searchers were looking for.

 It makes me wonder what we did before the Internet and Google when we wanted to uncover some obscure information. It wasn't like you could just drop by the public library and ask the reference librarian if they had any books about "grim reaper with sombrero." Though in the years I worked in a public library I heard some pretty bizarre requests.

 I for one don't know how we managed to do anything before there was the Internet. I forget how I found a hotel to stay at, purchased music, communicated with friend and family or found out what was going on in the world at any given second. I'm thinking of printing up t-shirts and bumper stickers that say, "I'll be wired until I've expired."

 Anyway, here's to all you random searchers. Without you I'd feel so alone.

Uniforms

The universal "they" say that clothes make the man. It is unfortunately sad, but true. Every day I walk by people on the seedy streets on the fringe of Seattle's International District and shake my head in wonder at the uniforms people don to express themselves.

It's not that I am a fashion plate hot (or cold) off the pages of GQ. I'm definitely not. I tend to wear whatever makes me blend in, not stand out. Oh, in my younger days I tried making statements with my clothing and hair styles. I have many embarrassing "what was I thinking" photos to prove it. But middle age has taught me that trying to dress young simply makes you look absurd, not hip.

I imagine I've ranted about middle aged men trying to stay young by dressing the way they did in their 20s before. Although I admit to sporting a pony tail and pierced ears as a young man, I wouldn't be caught dead with either now (which becomes a very real risk as I pass middle age).

I defend my tattoo as art, however. Not that I can do much about it at this point. At least I can cover it up. And it is on my arm if you must know.

What triggered this random train of thought about people's personal uniforms was ironically my commute on the train last Monday (in between the train being cancelled by mud slides).  We were just a few minutes out of Seattle when a man came down from the train car's upper level to use the rest room on the main level. He looked as though he had just stepped out of a Marlboro commercial. He had one of those cowboy duster jackets on, a Stetson hat, jeans and big belt buckle with what looked like a steer on it. He also had a handlebar mustache.  He looked like someone who was going to rob the train rather than ride it.

It dawned on me that this was this guy's uniform. I doubt whether it occurred to him that there was anything odd about it. And there wouldn't have been anything odd about it if we were riding a commuter train in Montana. It is just that Seattle doesn't have a lot of cows to wrangle.

I would rather see a middle aged cowboy uniform than the gang banger wanna be's that populate the sidewalks outside my building. I will never get used to the stupidity of wearing pants that are ten times too big for you and letting them bunch around your knees to expose boxers. I see these guys shuffling along holding up their pants looking like a bad parady of a Tim Conway comedy sketch (very few of you will get this reference) and wonder what could they possibly be thinking.

The answer is that they aren't thinking. They are simple stuck trying to project something about themselves by donning what they think is a unique uniform. God only knows what kind of delusion they conjure up when they look into the mirror. To me they simply look like pathetic clowns.

In addition to the cowboy on the train there has also been a group of what I believe are art students riding to downtown Seattle. I assume they are art students because they all dress in black and wear what we used to refer to as "hot pants" but with tights (mainly the girls). They all look about 12, but I imagine they are in the 17 or 18 year old range since anyone under 30 looks 12 to me.  Other than being either shorter or taller than each other, they all look alike.

The point is that they fancy themselves as looking unique but they are dressed alike. So they are essentially sheep to fashion like everyone else, albeit black-clad sheep.

My advice to people who want to celebrate your uniqueness? Don't try to express your uniqueness through fashion. You don't stand out, you stick out or worse: disappear in a sea of unique wannabee's.

It's okay to march to the beat of a different drummer, just make sure the drummer is playing with both sticks.

I haven't a clue what that means.

Petty little cacophonies

One of my pet peeves is people who make annoying (and often disgusting) noises, oblivious to anyone around them. It is a cacophony that weighs heavily on my OCD nature.

I'm not sure why anyone would keep a peeve as a pet. They aren't very cute and cuddly (though they don't puke on the carpet or pee on my daughter's bed like our cats).

But I digress.

There is just something obsessively distracting about snorts, sniffing, wheezing, excessive throat clearing, hacking, phlegm rattles, grunts, sighs, heavy breathing and other similar sounds people make in public when they should only really make them when they are alone. Gyms and locker rooms are particularly notorious places for people to make disgusting sounds.

Maybe it is just me, but I find it hard to concentrate on my workout when someone is on the elliptical machine next to me grunting or clearing there throat every five seconds. The maddening thing about it is that you can't say anything to them about it. It is considered bad form to turn to the person and say, "Excuse me, but could you please stop making that disgusting sound or move to a different machine where no one has to listen to you?"

Why do people lifting weights have to grunt and shout all the time. Can't they be more Zen like about pumping iron? And I really get annoyed by overweight, naked people sitting in the locker room sighing heavily and wheezing after a workout. I also get annoyed by overweight, clothed people sitting in the locker room sighing heavily and wheezing after a workout. But at least they are wearing clothes.

Public transit is another source of disgusting people sounds, particularly buses. Doesn't matter where you sit, someone invariably sits next to you and begins "harrumphing" or clearing their throat of a phlegm ball the size of a small child. I won't even go into the smells that usually accompany these people.

I won't even go into the disgusting sounds that emanate from public rest rooms. Suffice it to say, I have a phobia about using one if anyone is in one of the other stalls.

My wife gave me a gift certificate for a massage for Christmas. It had been years since I'd had a massage and I was looking forward to it. When I got to the massage therapist, she took me to the therapy room and told me to undress and get under the sheets on the massage table face down. I complied and waited patiently for my relaxing massage, listening to the pleasant New Age music. The masseuse came in and began the massage. And then the noise began.

She snorted, wheezed and made sounds like a snoring elephant. I tried to ignore the sounds and enjoy the massage but it was like trying to relax in tuberculosis ward.

The sad thing is that I don't think most people are aware of the disgusting noises they make. Since I am annoyed by noises so much, I try to be aware of my own. My wife claims I snore, but I only have her word on it.  Other than that, I try and confine my obnoxious sounds to those times when I am alone and since they are my own noises, I am not really bothered by them.

After all if someone snorts, sniffs, wheezes, excessive clears their throat, hacks, rattles their phlegm, grunts, sighs, breathes heavily or makes other similar sounds and there is no one there to hear it, does it really make a sound?

Pretty Zen, huh?

No cliff references and other resolutions

There is nothing like the threat of economic ruin to ring in the new year.

I find it very sad that the stock market sheep continue to fall for the brinkmanship in Washington D.C. The fiscal cliff was a bit like the Mayan End of the World without the parties.  But if they had hyped up fiscal cliff parties, they could have created a drinking game where you got to down a shot every time someone said "fiscal cliff," and there would be one heck of a lot of drunk frat boys making late night calls sobbing into the phone, "I lub youse guys" to their Senate and Congress people.

But I, like every other average Joe Bag of Doughnuts didn't really understand the importance of anything either the Republicans or Democrats were arguing about despite the mass media experts explaining it to me ad nauseum. I just know that every time the federal government is about to go belly up, they borrow more of the imaginary money to increase the national debt beyond the comprehension of anyone. It makes you wonder why all the world leaders don't just give every country a "get out of debt" free card and start over with no one owing anyone anything.

I was never very good at economics.

Regardless, it is the year 2013 and we have four more years until another presidential election and the Olympics. So that is something. I am a bit surprised that no one has made a big deal over the unlucky 13 in year 2013. I am sure that if 2013 has any of your average natural disasters, it will be blamed in retrospect on the number 13 (unless someone unearths an Aztec calendar that is missing a few pages).

I spent New Year's Day dragging our no longer "live" Christmas tree out into the yard and dismembering its corpse. This is not something I am proud of.  I much prefer simply disassembling an artificial tree and putting it back in a box as I did the previous day with my Elvis Tree.

As in other years with less ominous unlucky numbers, I have made no resolutions. At my age, I have pretty much accepted all of my faults and imperfections and see no reason to resolve to do anything about any of them.  Though I would find it refreshing to make resolutions like "I resolve to start smoking, eat whatever I want, drink like a fish and stop bathing altogether."

As it is, I simply settle for getting out of bed every day and getting the highest possible score I can in Angry Birds. I believe in setting the bar low enough to step over without breathing heavily.

No end in sight

So no matter what time zone you live in and what part of the world, the end of days associated with the Mayan calendar was as anti-climatic as Harold Camping's failed rapture call. So perhaps the end of the world will not come with a bang, but through a slow process of attrition like a river wearing down a rock. The rock doesn't explode. It just wears down.

Many people joked about the end of the world (including me). But I have to wonder if there was this niggling idea in the back of many people's minds wondering "what if?" And I think there may be just a bit of a sense of relief (or disappointment) that nothing happened.

There is a certain "carrot and stick" aspect to human nature. We are motivated by the potential of events happening. We, as a species, seem to need something (positive or negative) to look forward to. It could be as simple as the weekend or as complex as the end of the world. We need something to look forward to in order to escape the mundane.

Perhaps it is how we deal with the inevitability of our own death. It would somehow be easier to accept our own end if everything else was being snuffed out at the same time.

I write this as I watch yet another documentary about the Mayan prediction of the end of the world (or the Western world's interpretation of the Mayan prediction). I suppose it is the last day when they can screen such a documentary. Because tomorrow, it all gets filed as bull shit and we will move on to the next ancient text prediction of the end of the world.

Just please don't let it be Harold Camping who comes up with it.

It can't rain all the time

In a drought, rain is a blessing. When it never seems to stop, it is a curse. We experienced record days without rain in Seattle during the summer and fall. It is making up for it now.

The consequences include an unplanned indoor swimming pool in my basement, frequent mud slides that have blocked the tracks of the train I normally commute on; and I broke down and purchased a pair of rubber boots that I normally wouldn't be caught dead in.

I attribute the flooded basement to a curse triggered by cutting down our own Christmas tree this year.  You would think I would have learned my lesson about cutting down trees. The contractors are still rooting around (pun intended) trying to find out why the water all of a sudden began flowing into my basement. This was after we had to pay $1000 to have the wet carpet and half of the walls removed and sprayed with chemicals to prevent mold.

So far they have determined that the problem is not with the French drain that already exists in the basement. Before this I didn't even know what a French drain was let alone that I had one. The only way they determined that the French drain was okay was by punching a hole in the cement floor. So now we have a working French drain, but a hole in the floor that matches nicely the demolition motif we've got going down there.

Apparently the problem has now been traced to one of the outlets for the French drain that snakes under our deck and down to the slope that was slipping last winter due to the rain. The retaining wall we had repaired so far appears to be holding despite the efforts of the rain and the mountain beaver to compromise it. I have a hunch the mountain beaver has something to do with the plugged drain outlet as well. We won't know until they rip up some of the deck to get to it.

The irony in this all is that none of the damage or repairs are covered by our homeowner's insurance. There is some clause that doesn't pay out for damage caused by ground water coming into your house. It would be different if a pipe had burst. And the claims adjuster said it wouldn't have been covered by flood insurance because we aren't eligible for flood insurance since we don't live in a flood plain.

And the rain continues. It turned to snow briefly yesterday which added to the fun of my daily commute that used to be a pleasant train ride along the shoreline of the Puget Sound. Now it involves driving to a park-and-ride lot, parking next to a guy who is living in his VW van and catching a packed bus for a 45-minute bus ride into downtown Seattle.

Now is the winter of my discontent.

Maybe absolutely not

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines." --Ralph Waldo Emerson 

 One of the things I've learned about my life as I spiral through middle age is that the only people who believe in absolutes are the very young or the very stupid. There is no certainty about anything. It's what makes life frustrating and interesting.

This may be disconcerting to people who seek consistency in a random world. If we believe Darwin, nothing would have evolved for better or worse if everything was consistent and static.

And I'm not just waxing macro philosophic jibba jabba. We start out believing that there are absolutes when we are children. We believe our parents know everything or know nothing. We believe doctors have all of the answers and can cure all. We believe that the next politician really does want to change things for the better. We believe we'll be best friends forever. We believe that the one true religion will save us. We are absolute sure of all of these things until they turn out to be absolutely wrong.

Well, not absolutely wrong, because there are no absolutes. Life is full of footnotes and disclaimers. Your parents don't know everything or nothing. Most doctors are doing the best they can, rolling dice and hoping they don't cut out something you really need. Some politicians really do want to change things until they realize they can't or they meet the right lobbyist. Friends come and go. There is no one true religion.

You feel betrayed when you first start to realize that things aren't always what you believed they were. One of the most idiotic phrase ever uttered is, "That's not fair." Fair to who? Fair by whose rules? Something may suck, but it has nothing to do with not being fair. The zebra may not think it is fair that the lion has chosen him for dinner when he just met the zebra love of his life, but the lion thinks it is pretty darned fair (or fare).

I'm not suggesting that we settle or accept everything under the guise of "Shit happens." I think what makes use strong is the struggle to create the closest thing we can to absolutes in our own lives. The operative statement here is "our own lives." My absolutes are not going to be the same absolutes as someone else. They may come close. But no two people or snow flakes are alike (as far as we know).

My parents didn't know everything but they did the best they could. Doctors are best consulted only if you have a gaping wound that is too big for a bandage you have at home. Never vote for politicians who advocate for change and claim to have been abducted by aliens. Enjoy the friends you have when you have them. As for religion, if you meet the Buddha by the road, kill him.

I'm not absolutely sure about any of this, however.

12-12-12

I would be remiss if I didn't post on the only 12-12-12 date in my lifetime. Not that it truly has any significance since a calendar is as artificial measurement of time as is a clock. I don't imagine nature crosses off the days the way humans do.

The mountain beaver in my backyard probably doesn't know or care that it is 12-12-12. It doesn't wake up, look at a clock and say, "Time to get up and randomly dig through shit. Oh, it's 12-12-12! I should eat some bark and ferns to celebrate."

Not that I think the mountain beaver ever sleeps. It just seems to dig.

I'm digressing again, aren't I?

It just occurred to me that there will never be a 13-13-13. What's that all about? There will be an 11-12-13.  I wonder what the mountain beaver will be doing then? I suppose it depends upon whether world ends when the Mayan calendar winds down.

Oh well. Happy 12-12-12!

I'm not running as fast as I can

I hate running. I used to tell people the only reason to run is if someone is chasing you. I still feel that way, but I have accepted that the only way I can truly keep weight off is by doing the thing I hate.

I know that some people love to run. I have heard about people getting in the zone and the brain releasing chemicals that make them feel euphoric. The only thing my body seems to release when I run is sweat and pain.

Now granted, the only place I normally run is on a treadmill in the gym. And unless I am on a machine with a built in television, boredom adds to my hatred of running. Because the only thing I seem to be able to think about when I run is when I can stop running. And when you want something to pass quickly, it turns into the slow motion sequence from the Bionic Man (for the young and the pop culturally impaired, the Bionic Man was a bad series from the 70s starring Lee Majors as a man who lost several limbs in an accident and had them replaced with super powered bionic ones...so he could run and jump at super fast speeds that they always showed in slow motion to avoid having to spend money on better special effects...after all, it was the 70s).

I don't think I really started hating to run until I was in 7th grade PE and had a sadistic PE teacher named Mr. Ackley who would make you run two cross-country's (the equivalent of a mile) if you were the last one to get dressed and stand on your number in the gym before the bell rang. I developed a psychosomatic cough that year due to the stress around running. To add to the stress, I had an English class right before PE with a teacher who wouldn't let anyone leave when the bell rang until everyone was quiet. So we never got released on time. I started wearing sweater vests so that I could unbutton my shirts under the sweater to safe time changing once I got to the locker room.

It didn't help that I was what my mother called "a stocky kid" in grade school and 7th grade. It made running even a single mile agony. But by the time I completed 7th grade I had become borderline anorexic and was as skinny as a rail right up until I approached 40.

Middle age severely impacted my middle. And this was despite years of taking aerobic classes. I just foolishly clung to self-delusion that I could still eat and drink just about anything I wanted. I learned where the old adage "You are what you eat" and "bread basket" came from. My real moment of truth came when I weighed in for a physical to qualify for life insurance after my son was born. I realized then that I was twice the man I used to be--literally.

So I faced the thing I hated the most (right after being fat) -- I added running on the treadmill to my routine.I also turned away from some of the things I liked the most like bread, french fries, and most sugar. I stopped eating out for lunch and reduced my portions. And I weighed myself regularly to avoid self-delusion. Eventually much of the weight was dropped.

The exercise has become more or less second nature and I don't feel like puking after jogging for a mile. I don't think I will ever truly love to run, though. I try to mix it up with elliptical and rowing machines just to cut the boredom. I've managed to maintain my weight for several years now.

But I still sweat like a pig and I curse Mr. Ackley every mile I run.

I am un-a-Mused

At the height of my blogging days (2006), I logged in 292 posts. Six years later, in 2012, I've posted 35 (well 36 after this post). That's an 88 percent drop in the number of posts (you can tell that research is part of my day job). Though in 2009 I only posted 23 times. I think it had something to do with having a baby boy and toddler girl in the house and the distractions of being a new, but pretty old, parent.

I don't know what's wrong with me this year, though. I'm not as amused by my muse anymore. And maybe it is because I've been blogging for more than eight years and it has lost that new blog smell. Now it just smells like stale french fries and coffee.

In 2006, I had a lot more fellow bloggers reading and commenting. It helped feed the muse.Almost all of them have dropped off the radar. The only comments I get anymore are from Baggy over in England (which I appreciate).

I don't know if it is just that blogging has changed and primarily been taken over by business blogs and technical blogs.I don't follow many blogs anymore. I imagine there are still personal bloggers by the millions but I just don't have any desire to hit the "next blog" button and venture into the wasteland to find an interesting one.

I subscribe to marketing guru Seth Godin's blog and screenwriter Kevin Levine's blog (he was one of the writers for Cheers). They are both well-written blogs, but they post everyday (and sometimes twice a day) and frankly I have an aversion to overachievers so I only read them sporadically.

Sometimes I think it is better to just post once or twice a week. Less is often more (more or less). And I know this is just my way of rationalizing why I don't fire out 292 posts like I did in 2006. But hey, if I did, 90 percent of them would probably be about not having anything to write about.

Sigh.

Repent: The end of the 13th b'ak'tun is near

I hate to break it to you, but the end of the 13th b'ak'tun (a cycle from the Mayan calendar) is coming up in just three weeks. And everybody knows that when the calendar ends, so does the world. So come Dec. 21, you won't have to worry about any last minute Christmas shopping.

I haven't seen as much hype about this "end of the world" as there was for Harold Camping's much ballyhooed end of the world and the resulting rapture (not to be confused with the Debby Harry song from the 80s).

BTW, "ballyhooed" is not a word I get to use very much but it just sort of slipped naturally into that last sentence. It refers to sensationalized marketing efforts. Its origins are said to be associated with a mythical creature called the ballyhoo bird that an 1880 Harper's magazine article described as having four wings, two heads and the ability to whistle through one bill while singing through the other.

Which just about describes Harold Camping.

But I digress.

End of the world or not, let's face it, all of our days, like the calendar, are numbered. Everything ends (except for Buddha and Friends reruns). Whether the world ends on Dec. 21, 2012 with a bang, or slowly chokes from Global Warming, it doesn't change the fact of our mortality. If nothing ended, there wouldn't be any room for anything else to begin.

I'm not trying to sound like a Debbie Downer, just realistic. Even if the world ended tomorrow, odds are something new would grow in its place. And down the road that world would grow arrogant about lasting forever and eventually implode or explode as well. It's that cycle of life and death that only Buddha seemed to have overcome.

I suppose it is why mankind invented the afterlife. Because it is a lot easier to face mortality if you know you have somewhere to go after you die. If there is an afterlife, I hope it doesn't involve having to be reunited with all of your dead relatives. Because I have a shitload of them and I really didn't know or particularly like any of them. So being reunited with strangers isn't my idea of paradise. And I would rather not be reincarnated unless I could come back as someone like Brad Pitt (though who knows if he is really happy).

I am actually amazed at the elaborate institutions and complex myths mankind has concocted to stave off ceasing to exist. There seem to be a infinite number of religions claiming to be the one, true path to salvation. And ironically religions are probably the number one cause of people fighting and killing each other.

And where did civilizations like the Egyptians come up with their elaborate rituals and ceremonies that were supposed to guarantee passage to the after world (for those rich and powerful enough to warrant it)? Who is giving these people all of these instructions? As far as I know, the dead still don't have a 4G cell phone plan that includes unlimited calling to this world. The only people I know talking to the dead are those mental midgets on Ghost Adventurers and the only thing the dead seem to be capable of saying are barely audible, garbled words about Zak's bad haircuts.

Oh well, I suppose we will all find out on Dec. 21.

Or not.

Smart phones are dumb

I was approaching a revolving door in my building lobby the other day and the guy in front of me stops in his wedge of the door and reads a message on his smart phone. Seriously? Who does this? Apparently a guy focused on whatever text or e-mail he is getting does. Who cares who is behind you or around you when you are in the "connected" zone.

So I have come to the conclusion that the smarter the phone, the dumber the person using it.

Being an admitted hypocrite, I do have a smart phone. But I've only had it for a couple of months. Before that I had a Blackberry which as phones go is as sharp as a river rock. For one, they don't have a touch screen and all of the apps you get for them are pretty lame.

My Android smartphone has the potential for thousands of useless apps. So far I only use one for solitaire and another for Angry Birds. The rest of the time I spend obsessively checking my e-mail which is pointless since a bulk of the e-mails I get (now that the election is over) are from Groupon or Living Social offering me great deals on Brazilian wax jobs.

I do miss the days when the closest thing to a mobile phone was a cheap walkie talkie that only picked up static and the occasional garbled word from one of my brothers. We couldn't even fathom the need to be connected to a telephone 24/7. I barely can stand a conversation with anyone in person for more than 30-seconds let alone walking around talking constantly through a Blue Tooth earpiece like someone with multiple personalities talking to people who aren't really there. We did have a few people who walked around talking to no one in particular when I was a kid, they just were more clearly identifiable as having lost the cheese off from their cracker than people are today.

Having said all of this, I pretty much can't cope without my smartphone. I begin to twitch if I go anywhere without it. And I panic and hold it up in the air if I don't see at least two bars on the signal indicator. I also feel a bit inferior that I don't have a 4G connection even though I haven't a clue what that is. I think it is the telephone equivalent to a Hemi (which I also don't have a clue about).

I remember an old Twilight Zone episode called, "Night Call"  about a person who started getting phone calls from some unidentified person every night. Anyway the person finally discovers that a telephone line had broken and fallen on the grave of her dead fiance (who was killed in a car crash while she was driving), thus giving them a direct line to the dead.

So I kind of wonder if the next generation of smartphone is going to offer an app that allows you to talk to dead people (another twist on unlimited family plan that I imagine ATT will manage to assess some new fees on). Maybe we'll even start burying people with smartphones. But then I imagine we'll get calls from our dead relatives complaining that we only buried them with a 3G phone.

Political spam

I'm glad it is finally election day and I won't have to watch any more political ads pointing out very matter of factly that someone's opponent is the devil, hates children, seniors and the middle class, will destroy social security, raise taxes and kick your dog (or cat). If any voter sitting on the fence is swayed by any political ad, they need to be nailed to the fence because they are truly a tool.

Although I support Obama and think Mitt makes even George Bush look good, I will not miss receiving multiple e-mails on a daily basis telling me that my $5 will save the nation and enter me in a contest to have lunch with Sarah Jessica Parker and the President. I have come to the conclusion that the Obama campaign is being run by Publisher's Clearing House and if Ed McMahon was a alive he'd be doing the President's fund-raising commercials.

I am not even sure how the President got my e-mail address. I assume I clicked something on Facebook and launched the onslaught. If that is the case, the least the President could do is "like" some photos of my kid's Halloween costumes before asking me for another $5. If I had indeed contributed $5 every time the President's campaign asked me for money, I would have contributed several thousand by this time.

Mitt has not asked me for a cent. But that is because I am not a right-winged, millionaire Republican asshole and don't make enough money to warrant an e-mail from him. So there is some advantage to being middle class with very little discretionary income.

And speaking of conspiracy theories, I am convinced the Republicans orchestrated the super storms that rocked the East coast in an attempt to tip the vote in their favor. I wouldn't put it past them.

But I digress.

Go Obama!

Sixty-one years

I just returned from four days in Boise helping my brothers sort through our family home to prepare for selling it after my mother died. My father had the house built in 1951 after he married my mother and it has stood for 61-years with various add-on's and remodels. But it has only been lived in by our family. And now that is about to end.

The house is only about 1700 square feet now. When it was first built, it was even smaller. There are only two bedrooms, one bathroom and a partial basement. But it housed five people for almost the first half of its existence. My current home has four bathrooms, four bedrooms and only houses four people.

In 61-years the house has been heated with coal, oil and now natural gas. It originally had its own well, but now taps into the city water supply. My parents added on a family room and garage in the late 60's and a utility room in the 70's. The living room became the dining room and my mother added a bay window that her dog always slept in. Some time in the 80's my father turned the garage into his reading room.

The apple and cherry trees of my youth are long gone, replaced by matured oak and pine trees. A huge maple still grows in front of the house. The original chain link fence still surround the house, but the privacy screen of lilacs that used to surround the back yard are gone.

The house sits on property that used to be part of my father's parents chicken farm. They gave him the property as a wedding present. Their house still sits on a small lot next door. My parents sold it after my grandmother died in the mid-70's. They sold it for $5000 to some "friends." My mother had sold it to them because she wanted a say in who her neighbors were. The friends fixed the house up and flipped it for $40,000 in a year. My mother had crappy neighbors from then on.

Some time in the early 90's, the neighbor on the south of the house sold to developers who put in a row of godawful townhouses that further brought the neighborhood down with a sea of renters. The townhouses were built right up to our property line.

Originally, I shared the front bedroom with my two brothers. They slept in bunkbeds and I slept in a twin bed (after I escaped from my crib). Later, when I was about 10, my brothers moved downstairs into the basement (which at the time had an outside entrance). I moved into the back bedroom and my parents moved into the front bedroom. After both of my brothers finally moved out, I moved downstairs into the basement. That's when my mother had the utility room built and the outside entrance to the basement became the inside entrance.

I moved out of the house when I was 19, but moved back briefly for a few months when I was 23 to save a bit of money before moving to Seattle to complete college. For years, I'd come home at least once a year and stay in the basement during my visit. After my father died in the early 90s, I started staying in hotels. I haven't slept in the house for at least 20 years.

My father used to have a workshop in an old shed in the backyard. It had once been a chick coop.  It started to fall down after my father died and my mother finally tore it down. You can still see the foundation.

Several pets are buried in the backyard, but the markers for their graves are long gone. The names of my brothers and I were scratched into wet concrete when my father poured our patio years ago.

When I was a boy, I used to wonder what it would be like to live in another house. I remember sitting in my father's workshop and writing my name in the sawdust behind a cabinet, wondering if someday someone would find it. I also buried some of my school papers from grade school in a can in the backyard, thinking my signature would be worth something one day.

It isn't (except on a check).

I used to pitch a pup tent in the backyard on warm summer nights and camp out in the back yard. I remember hating how big the yard was because I had to mow it. I also remember climbing the largest apple tree in the back yard and staring at the clouds wondering what my life would be life when I was grown.

I remember my dad building a dog house for our dog Shep. I drew pictures of a dog family and glued it on the inside walls of the dog house so Shep wouldn't feel so alone. I would also sometimes crawl into the house and curl up with him. He was hit by a car when he got out to go carousing because my parents didn't want to spend the money to get him neutered. Shep is one of the pets buried in the backyard.

There are many memories stored in the walls of that house. I would have almost rather that it been torn down than sold and occupied by strangers. Then the memories could scatter and be free and pure without confusing them with the lives of strangers.

But life doesn't really have time for nostalgia.

Shades of gray

Given the title, I suppose this post could be another rant about aging and the transformation of my once brown locks to timber wolf gray. Or if I had tacked on "50" to the title I could have got all the traffic for the soft-core porn novel that women are swooping off the shelves. Or it could be about the weather shift here in Seattle back from the unaccustomed record days of sunshine back to the misty grays.

Maybe it is about all of those things (except for the stupid porn novel...I just threw that in to get more hits).

I grew up in an era of grays. Our televisions gave us a gray view of the world before flat screen, HD with 3D became the norm. I didn't know that Dorothy's world went from the stark gray of Kansas to the livid colors of Oz until I was in my teens. I had always watched the Wizard of Oz on a black and white television until color televisions finally came down in price enough that even lower middle class families like ours could own them.

My children look at black and white photos and ask me why the color has drained out of them. I just tell them that there was a time without color. Most of the photographs from my childhood were black and white. So many of my memories are forever gray (and often blurry) images pasted in worn photo albums.

What is color anyway, but a trick of reflected light. Perhaps the real world is only various shades of gray.

I look in a mirror and see gray everywhere. It's like a mask of age donned by my much younger mind. I remember having an old man rubber mask when I was in my late teens. I put it on once along with old man clothes and shuffled up to my mom's front door and rang the bell (I was still living at home in the basement with a door that opened up to the outside).  She came to the door looking vaguely frightened and asked, "Could I help you?" I laughed and spoke with my young man's voice, "Mom, it's me." It took her a few moments but she finally recognized that it was her youngest son. I took off the mask and we all had a good laugh.

The mask doesn't come off anymore.

All you can eat

Anytime I go to a restaurant that offers all you can eat or bottomless anything, I am wrought with anxiety. Perhaps it stems from childhood. Eating out was an event in our house because we could rarely afford to do so. When we did, we would go to places like Bower's 99'R, a place that offered a full meal for 99-cents and all you could eat. Later, after Bower's 99'R went out of business (eaten out of business I imagine), we went to places like the Chuck Wagon Buffet and later, the Royal Fork.

My anxiety at being faced with the promise of all you can eat is that, as a child, I really wanted to test the limits of all I could eat and I would fill my plate with a bit of everything. And part of the way into it I was unable to finish any of it. The sign at the Chuck Wagon admonished people to "Take all you want, but eat all you take." So I dined in fear that I would be judged by the servers who cleared plates for taking more than I could eat.

All you can eat was not a problem for my father. He was in his element when in a buffet. He could balance and fill three plates at a time and go back for seconds and thirds. He had an amazing appetite and always wanted to make sure he got his money's worth. Remarkably, my father was not a large man nor was he ever overweight.

The aspect of a buffet that inspires panic in me is the variety. I am always afraid that I am missing out on some item and I always feel obligated to try and cover as much ground as possible. So rather than enjoying the dining experience, I am anxious to empty one plate and head out again.

Ironically most places that offer all you can eat counter the urge to eat all you want by making it as unappetizing and tasteless as possible. This, however, doesn't deter your average buffet dweller. I learned at a young age that people went to these types of restaurants because a) they have large families, b) they are large people, and c) they don't have lots of money.

I stopped going to buffets after growing up and leaving Boise. Though when I lived in a college dorm I was faced with buffet style dining. Later in life I would try a buffet or two at casinos in Reno or Las Vegas. I remember being appalled that, while staying at Circus, Circus in Reno, they promoted their buffet on there in room televisions and boasted that they had the certified largest plates in Reno (presumably to attract some of the certified largest people in Reno who longed for big plates and helpings). I was equally appalled at the quality of the food at the Circus Circus buffet and the people who sought it out. It was like a scene from "Night of the Living Buffet." I wanted to scream running from the room.

Cruise ship buffets are just about as bad as Circus Circus. They epitomize all that is so very wrong about a buffet and attract lowest common denominator on a cruise ship. You have to endure people actually sampling food while in the buffet line and bitching loudly about the food as they pile their plates high with it. But they are there because they want to get their money's worth while on the cruise and the dining room experience doesn't give you the portion size you can score in the buffet (plus you don't have to wear a tux).

I hadn't been to a buffet in quite some time until this last Saturday. We were driving back home from an event in Tacoma. It was nearing dinner time and I had two tired and hungry toddlers in the car. So we decided to stop at an all you can eat place called Zoopa's. Zoopa's tries to disguise that fact that it is a buffet by saying it offers an extensive salad bar that they make you go through before you get access to the all you can eat past, soup and pizza bars. But the salad bar is just their ploy to fill you up on cheap and fattening salad items so you won't be able to eat all you want.

Zoopa's also tries to taper what people eat by providing one of the certified smallest plates I've seen in a buffet once you pass the salad bar. It is physically impossible to overfill one of their plates. But the chronic buffet goers that I saw at Zoopa's compensated by the simply filling their food trays instead of using the small plates. Large people who need all they can eat are resourceful people as well.

Anyway, I had buffet flashbacks while having my Zoopa's experience. And the atmosphere, poor food quality and the clientele definitely kept me from overeating.

It's definitely no Sizzler.

Icebergs

I have always somewhat fascinated by the Titanic. I'm not sure why. I know lots of people are. There are hundreds of books, movies and exhibits dedicated to the sinking of the unsinkable.

Perhaps it is because of the sheer arrogance of engineering challenging nature. Or perhaps it is because tragedy brings out the best and worst of human nature and peels back the facade of personalities.

Being the Captain of the Titanic is a euphemism for being doomed to failure. I'm sure Captain Edward Smith, the actual Captain of the Titanic wouldn't be pleased to go down in history as an albatross. But he was held in high esteem at the time by the sailing community for going down with his ship. It was more than the head of the White Star Line J. Bruce Ismay did. He jumped in one of the first available life boats.

The thing about the Titanic is that no one on board expected it to sink. I doubt Captain Smith thought his life would end that night. He was near the end of his career and I imagine he thought he had beat the odds and escaped the fate of many men who take to the sea.

No one probably expected to hit an ice berg that night, either. Because we all naturally assume that ice bergs are pretty big and visible and the odds of smacking into one in the middle of the Atlantic seem pretty slim.

It's a bit like life. You don't expect ice bergs. And you can't spend your life worried about them. Because if you do, you won't enjoy the cruise. You'll just be scanning the dark water wondering whether or not you should go to bed with your life vest on.

I go back and forth about whether or not life is random or everything happens for a purpose. It's a circular thought process. If everything happens for a purpose, what is it? Who decides and why? If everything is random, and shit just happens, then why does there seem to be a pattern to everything? Or is it just our brain forcing a pattern on randomness to avoid going mad and keep us from thinking that eventually, all of us hit an ice berg.

I wish I knew the answer. But then again, I'm glad I don't.

The Valley of the Shadow

I just returned from a trip to Boise (The Treasure Valley) where I had gone to visit my 87-year old mother. On the third day of my visit there, she died.

I am not using euphemisms like "passed on" or "met her maker" because I am writing in my blog and not engaged in polite conversation with well meaning individuals who tap dance around the subject because let's face it, no one wants to talk about death.

It should not have been a surprise to me that my mother died. She had confessed to me four years ago that she thought she had breast cancer. But being a Christian Scientist, she refused any kind of medical examination or treatment. So she received none.

She managed to maintain relatively well for the first few years. But it was obvious, the cancer was taking its toll. It wasn't like my father's stomach cancer, mind you. When he was diagnosed 19 years or so ago with it, it ravaged his body in a matter of months. And his pain was painfully obvious.

Not so with my mother. She stood by her faith and walked through the valley of the shadow of death. She just moved much slower than she had before admitting to having cancer.

In defense of my own guilty conscious, I tried to convince her to see a doctor. I flew to Boise and tried to organize an intervention. But she stubbornly refused and everyone in my family (including my mom) skirted any further discussion about her obvious disease. From then on, we simply averted our eyes to the growing tumor and the signs that my mother was sick.

It became more and more difficult to ignore in the past several months. The first thing to fade was her mobility. Up until that past few months she had still been walking to the store and working in her yard. But then she began having trouble finding her way back home or locking herself out of her house.

Next came the memory loss. I noticed it more and more on my weekly calls to her. She would repeat the same story several times during the course of a conversation. Then she began to not recognize who she was talking to. Many of the conversations began to focus on stories of her childhood because it was firmly rooted in her brain whereas the present skipped away off the surface.

Two weeks ago, my mother didn't answer the phone when I called. A call to my brother living in Boise brought me the information that she wasn't getting out of bed any longer. I booked a trip to Boise.

I wasn't really prepared for how bad off she had become. I'd seen her in June when I drove my family there for a visit. Although thin and complaining about not being able to get around easily, she was still taking care of herself and eating. Now, after renting a car I drove directly to her house from the airport.  I walked in her house and found her in her bed looking more frail and emaciated than I could have imagined or bear.

She didn't really recognize me at first, but she smiled a gentle smile. My sister-in-law helped my mother sit up  in hopes she would make it out of bed to go sit in her easy chair. It was obvious that the effort was taxing. She made it to her dining room where a row of dining room chairs served as islands for her to rest as she made the trek. She made it to the second chair before saying she just needed to rest. Then she just wanted to go back to her bed.

I spent the rest of the afternoon sitting in a chair next to her bed reading as she lay there, occasionally opening her eyes and pulling up a blanket tighter around her. Finally, I got up to leave. I asked my mother if she was okay and that I needed to leave to check into a hotel. She said she was fine and that I should go take care of what I needed to. I told her I loved her. She said she loved me, too and that I was very special.

The next day was spent trying to make my mother comfortable and get her to eat or drink something. It ended again with me sitting next to her bed, occasionally adjusting a pillow for her or giving her a drink of water. Towards evening I said goodbye and told her I loved her and returned to my hotel for the evening. My brother was spending the night at my mother's house at that point.

The next day when I got to my house, my brother wasn't there. I found my mother in her spare room. I asked her what she was doing there and she said that she had gone to the bathroom and it was as far as she could get. I asked her if she wanted to go to her room and she said she just wanted to lay there for awhile and rest. At that point my brother returned. He had been at the store picking up a few things. He tried giving my mother some water, but she couldn't drink it.

I got a wet wash cloth and wiped down her forehead and she told me that that felt good. Then she gasped and her eyes fluttered. Then she left the valley.

I won't go into the details of the tears and phone calls as we dealt with the aftermath of my mother's death and the emotional waves that still beat away at me. My mother had prearranged her own cremation, but it was up to my brothers and I to put together a memorial service and deal with the bureaucracy of death and its rituals.

Afterwards, as I walked through the empty house that I had grown up in, I was struck by the fact that it would soon pass on to strangers who would never know the history of this place that had stood for more than sixty years and seen the death of both my father and mother. It would likely be razed and subdivided to make way for townhouses or apartments. And the graves of pets and memories of flashlight tag and touch football in the backyard would be buried by concrete foundations and driveways.

I need to go back to Boise in a month or so and help sort through what is left of our family's life in that house before it is opened up to strangers to paw through the remnants for bargains or hidden treasure at an estate sale. My only hope is that my mother's faith has taken her to a better place and her spirit is free of the place. She never did like strangers in the house.